Back in the mid 1980s, when I really got into beekeeping, attending school in OH and then taking on a job in NY as an Apiary Inspector, absconding was unheard of. I don't recall Dr. Jim Tew mentioning absconding. If he did it was in passing and not a lecture topic.

Seems like since the Africanized honey bee (AHB) has hit the US that we hear about and experience absconding quite a bit. Isn't absconding a characteristic of AHB? Coincidence? Or are there some AHB genes that have gotten into the gene pool of all of our sources of queens? 

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